Assessing knowledge, concerns, and risk perceptions among Italian medical students during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. (preprint)

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE During the first phase of COVID-19 pandemic, Italian medical students transitioned from in-person to remote learning. This study was carried out to early assess students' sources of information, perceived risk of infection, knowledge and preventive practices in order to resume academic activity. The impact of training and volunteer work was also assessed. METHODS A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in May 2020 among medical students enrolled in the School of Medicine and Surgery, Bologna University. RESULTS The analysis included 537 responses. On average students used seven sources of information on COVID-19. Scientific journals were considered the most trustworthy but they ranked only 6th in the frequency of use. Perceived risk of infection was higher for academic activities, especially in the hospital than daily living activities. Less than 50% of students reported being trained on biological risk and use of PPE. Training received was significantly associated with both perceived risk of infection and confidence in the use of PPE. Students engaged in volunteer work had higher confidence in PPE usage. INTERPRETATION Accessible scientific information and students' engagement in spreading correct knowledge play an important role in challenging misinformation during the pandemic crisis. Students showed suboptimal knowledge about PPE use, calling for additional training. We found a moderate-high perceived risk of infection that could be mitigated with specific educational programs and by promoting voluntary work. Students' engagement in public health emergencies (PHE) could potentially be beneficial for their training and as well as for the healthcare system.

The impact of early scientific literature in response to COVID-19: a scientometric perspective (preprint)

Background. In the early phases of a new pandemic, identifying the most relevant evidence and quantifying which studies are shared the most can help researchers and policy makers. The aim of this study is to describe and quantify the impact of early scientific production in response to COVID-19 pandemic. Methods. The study consisted of: 1) review of the scientific literature produced in the first 30 days since the first COVID-19 paper was published; 2) analysis of papers' metrics with the construction of a Computed-Impact-Score (CIS) that represents a unifying score over heterogeneous bibliometric indicators. In this study we use metrics and alternative metrics collected into five separate categories. On top of those categories we compute the CIS. Highest CIS papers are further analyzed. Results. 239 papers have been included in the study. The mean of citations, mentions and social media interactions resulted in 1.63, 10 and 1250, respectively. The paper with highest CIS resulted "Clinical features of patients[...]" by Chaolin Huang et al., which rated first also in citations and mentions. This is the first paper describing patients affected by the new disease and reporting data that are clearly of great interest to both the scientific community and the general population. Conclusions. The early response of scientific literature during an epidemic does not follow a pre- established pattern. Being able to monitor how communications spread from the scientific world toward the general population using both traditional and alternative metric measures is essential, especially in the early stages of a pandemic.

Using altmetrics for detecting impactful research in quasi-zero-day time-windows: the case of COVID-19 (preprint)

On December 31st 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology detected in Wuhan City. The cause of the syndrome was a new type of coronavirus isolated on January 7th 2020 and named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). SARS-CoV-2 is the cause of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Since January 2020 an ever increasing number of scientific works have appeared in literature. Identifying relevant research outcomes at very early stages is challenging. In this work we use COVID-19 as a use-case for investigating: (i) which tools and frameworks are mostly used for early scholarly communication; (ii) to what extent altmetrics can be used to identify potential impactful research in tight (i.e. quasi-zero-day) time-windows. A literature review with rigorous eligibility criteria is performed for gathering a sample composed of scientific papers about SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 appeared in literature in the tight time-window ranging from January 15th 2020 to February 24th 2020. This sample is used for building a knowledge graph that represents the knowledge about papers and indicators formally. This knowledge graph feeds a data analysis process which is applied for experimenting with altmetrics as impact indicators. We find moderate correlation among traditional citation count, citations on social media, and mentions on news and blogs. This suggests there is a common intended meaning of the citational acts associated with aforementioned indicators. Additionally, we define a method that harmonises different indicators for providing a multi-dimensional impact indicator.